


raspberry

by gayforroxane



Series: under sea and storm, through bullets and blood [3]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: @ jughead to make up for dark!jarchie sorry guys, AU - soulmate identifying marks, Canon Asexual Character, Fluff, M/M, Roadtrip, its two in fucking morning fuck me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 10:13:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10435425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayforroxane/pseuds/gayforroxane
Summary: 4717 are the numbers scrawled on Jughead's ribs.Forsythe Pendleton Jones III is the name sprawled on Archie's.





	

He sees Jughead’s mark just after his fifteenth birthday, when they get caught in the rain on the way home from school.  
With the white of his t-shirt being pulled over his head and one of Archie’s sweatshirts being pulled on, he’d had a glimpse of the black ink against soft skin, a stark contrast.

4717

It had disappeared behind the soft, oversized expanse of his sweatshirt.

It was the only time he'd ever seen it.

  
Soulmarks are always in the same place, blood red and shining like an open wound, attracting attention, attracting glances like a beacon, like a mating call. Shapes or words or names or numbers, important clues, infinitesimal details. A scavenger hunt that matches people.  
Apparently, there's a whole science dedicated to the how.

Archie decides he'd rather know the why.

  
It's rare for soulmarks to not match. Clues were supposed to be true, not misleading, or meandering.

Fred and Mary Andrews didn't have matching scars, and neither did Gladys and FP Jones. They'd married because maybe if they could love despite it, their lives were worth more than the marks on their skin.

Proved wrong, they hid.

(if Fred Andrews and FP Jones had gone on a road trip senior year, like they'd planned, if the heroine and the beer hadn't found him first, if Mary’s red hair hadn't caught his eye, they may have realized that the marks curled around their right hips matched)

  
Betty doesn't have a mark.  
She's completely bare from head to toe, and her mother uses it against her.  
It's what forces her fingers down her throat, her grades into the nineties, her self care into a box labeled ‘worry later.’

Veronica’s mark is a magnifying glass, catching just behind her ear. Her mother encourages her love of Sherlock for years, a quiet giggle hidden behind her hand.

Kevin has a snake eating its own tail, blood red around his wrist.

Joaquin has a Sheriff’s badge and a multitude of shame from his family and neighbourhood.

  
After Grundy has gone, Archie sits in his room and writes until his fingers start to bleed. He watches numbly as his father wraps his finger tips in bandages, as he squeezes his shoulder and says, “Don't worry about school today, okay kid?”

In his room, the bandages fall to the floor and the scabs leave stains on his fretboard, and dye his strings red.

She’d had no soulmark.  
And his clearly wasn't for her, and he remembers the one time she paid attention to it. She had scraped her nails over it, drawing blood and murmured, “Well you won't be needing that, will you?” before promptly swallowing down his cock. The conversation comes back to him later and he avoids her for three days, claiming his father’s suspicion.

He drops his guitar on the floor, ignoring the dull twang of the strings. His fingers trace the dark words on his right ribs, following the lean, loopy writing forwards and backwards, spelling it out until he falls asleep.

  
The summer after their sophomore year, they leave on a road trip.

Jughead blushes and guffaws and shoves him, staring at roadmaps and creaky leather steering wheels and feet out the window. They listen to The Lumineers, put One Week by the Barenaked Ladies on repeat until they can sing even the fastest parts, competing to see who the loudest is. Archie grins and flushes and groans, watching the road signs and gas prices and bickering about snakes.

On the Fourth of July, 2017, they skip all the way up the west coast, until they reach Canada.

Jughead claimed that up here, the air tastes better.

Archie grins and shoves him into a wild raspberry grove, running when Jughead slathers his white shirt with pink juices, popping them into his mouth.

In the hot air on the pacific coast, lounging on a beach on Vancouver Island, Archie runs his hands through Jughead’s hair and dares him to try surfing with him, his fingers skirting over the raspberry juice that stains his cheeks like makeup.

“Right,” Jughead says, “Because throwing me in the ocean with a gigantic piece of cardboard is the right thing to do.”

Archie licks his cheek and listens to him squeal, falling back in the sand, squinting against the sun and Jughead, his weight on his stomach. It probably shouldn't feel as grounding as it does.

When the sun starts to slip below the horizon, they're still on the beach in a tiny, Canadian, West Coast town. The beaches don't close until midnight and Jughead brought beer.

“You know,” Jughead says as he takes a swig, leaning his head back. Archie red track the movement of his throat, the muscle that tense and release in his stomach and arms. “My soulmark is today’s date.” He laughs. “I was sure I’d meet someone, but…”

He tilts his beer in an imaginary cheers and falls back on the sand, arching. He presses into the red light of the setting sun, and Archie swallows.

“My soulmark is a name,” He says quietly, fixed on the sprawl of lilac, pastel pink, coral and dark red that lay across the sky like lazy children on a hot day. “And people always tell me it's easier that way, but I’ve met them.”

Jughead props himself on his elbows and stares at Archie. His pale skin is pink and orange and his mouth is red from wrapping around the beer bottle, from the raspberries. He's not wearing a shirt and he looks like the sunset. The jeans he's wearing sit low on his hips and show the band of his underwear and-- Archie pulls his eyes away.

“I’ve met them, and God, Jug, I think they're the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.” He sees Jughead as a buck-toothed kid with a hokey smile, with his nose broken and his knuckles bruised, in a suit at a funerals and weddings, in a tux at graduation, his beanie nowhere in sight. He sees Jughead next to him, laying on a beach in front of the sunset.

“Where's your mark?” He murmurs, toying with the label on his bottle.

“On my ribs,” Archie says, “High up on the right.”

He rests his palm over it. Jughead’s hands twitch.

“Archie,” He says.

“Yeah, Jug?”

“Whose name is it?”

Archie breathes deeply and takes a long sip of his beer, wrinkling his nose at the taste. He huffs out his nose and shakes his head. “Forsythe,” He says quietly.

Jughead snorts, flopping his head back into the sand. His hair looks blonde, between the light and the sand beneath him. He looks lighter like that, gentler, younger, sweeter.

“Wow, if you didn't wanna tell me, Arch, you just had to say so. There's no need--”

“Forsythe Pendleton Jones III.”

Jughead pauses and frowns, eyes closed, hands playing with the soft sand above his head. “Arch--”

“You've never told me your full name, right?” Archie asks, running a palm down his face. “You never had to, because I already knew it.”

In the moments that follow and they say nothing, the sun sets, disappearing beneath the call of the gulls and the murmur of the ocean brushing at their toes. The air gets sharper, cooler, and Archie sighs, trying to blink away the ache in his gut. He winces, trying to blink away the tears in his eyes. Before he can, though, he has a lap full of a dark-haired boy with light eyes and a mile and a half of bare skin.

“Jug, what're you--”

“I’ve spent all day with you.”

Archie raises an eyebrow.

“My soulmark is the 4th of July, 2017, Archie, and I’ve spent my whole day with you.”

He reaches for Archie hand, pushing into the mountains and valleys of his right ribs, where a sun-roughed hand covers black marks. Breathing softly, he lets his head fall forward onto Archie’s, who makes a small noise in the back of his throat.

“Jug--”

“If--”

“Can I kiss you?”

Jughead grins, pressing his open mouth to Archie’s cheekbones, his jaw, up to his forehead and his hairline, down over the bumping bridge of his nose.

“If you want,” Jughead says, smiling coyly.

“C’mere, Jug.” 

**Author's Note:**

> wow   
> too much too late   
> if you wanna rant/chat/whatever hmu on tumblr at blue-by-auster or toomuchtrademark


End file.
